In Thai Nguyen, one of the biggest tea growing areas of Vietnam, a young Vietnamese man is making a matcha product and earning billions of dong.

Made-in-Vietnam matcha has high quality

The use of Japanese matcha, or powder from grown and processed green tea leaves, began in Vietnam three years ago. The product is considered a precious natural herb which has many uses, from beauty care and weight loss to aging prevention.

Like Japan, Vietnam is famous for processing and exporting tea, but it still has to import matcha from Japan to satisfy the domestic demand.

As for Tung Duong, born in 1995, who was then a first-year student of the Thai Nguyen Pedagogical School, he saw a great opportunity to exploit.

“Why is the Japanese matcha so favored by Vietnamese consumers? Vietnam has large tea growing area, but it still has to import matcha,” he said.

After six months of studying the tea characteristics and Japanese matcha production line, the young man created green tea powder similar to Japanese matcha in both color and taste.

The materials used to make matcha are collected directly from Thai Nguyen.

Young tea leaves, after picked, are cleaned, steamed and dried, in which leaf veins and petioles are removed in accordance with a specific formula. After that, the tea leaves are ground with a granite mill to create powder.

Of the phases, steaming and grinding are important phases because they affect the quality, taste and the color of tea.

Duong admitted that at first, he could not control the two phases, and the products created had low quality.

At first, he used a normal grinder to create powder. The machine generated powder that was not fine enough to be used in food processing.

So he set about to work on a specific grinder. He decided to go to Japan to learn about the production of grinders.

Returning to Vietnam, Duong went to many provinces to look for the type of stone most suitable to create a grinder.

“It was a process full of hardship which cost me hundreds of millions of dong,” he recalled.

However, his great efforts brought big achievements. Duong said the successful invention of the granite grinder has paved the way for his production plan and has helped made-in-Vietnam matcha become competitive with Japanese matcha.

In 2016, the revenue from matcha was VND2 billion, and in 2017, it was VND3 billion.